The School & The School
by Change Perpetual
Summary: Set in the same world as China Mieville's "The City & The City." Two political boundaries inhabit the same city, its citizenry stabilized through indoctrination and willful ignorance of the other. A "fun" mystery with coming of age themes.


**The School & The School**

**Chapter 1**

My highschool's not like most others. Most teenagers get to go to a normal school with four grade levels, a few thousand students, a cafeteria and a gymnasium. Usually, your typical highschooler has one homecoming, one prom, a couple of pep rallies, an end of the year picnic and, of course, an awesome senior trip. Then again, you're typical highschooler doesn't go to Beszel/Ul Qoma PS 11, though.

By the way- My name's Corey Timmons, I'm a senior, and I've been attending this shithole for five years now.

Education in Beszel/Ul Qoma is nothing to brag about, but PS 11 is a train-wreck and a cluster-fuck like no other. Here's the story: years ago, sometime during 18th century, the Irish immigrated here- to Beszel I think- and made this place their new capital. Imagine Dublin- Joyce's depraved, drunken, dirty Dublin- and airlift the worst parts of it to an already existing minority ghetto, and you have the town we call Gloucester: an urban wasteland, completely removed from all signs of culture despite the various ethnic traditions that run through the veins of its diverse inhabitants.

Before the Irish came the area was all black and latino. Things were just as bad back then, from what I've heard, but it wasn't as crowded. But when the Irish came, things got a little bit more complicated. It was hard enough for the authorities of the day to decide what to do with all the new immigrants, but in their eyes the Irish were better than the dark skinned minorities who were already living in Gloucester. So what'd they do? You can probably guess. They let the famined islanders set their city down right on top of ours- literally. No barriers, no cross-hatching, nada.

At first, no one was sure whether the new Irish ghetto was Beszel or Ul Qoma. And, at first, no one cared much. Gloucester is more united than the rest of the city & the city, but that's more due to the authority's lack of motivation to deal with us. Breach hardly shows up in our neighborhood, and when there's something important like a murder that involves both cities (which happens more often here than anywhere else), things usually go unreported.

The public sector is a joke, but that goes without saying.

Shit. Granted, Gloucester isn't the nicest town in the city; granted, Gloucester is generally considered a piss-away public spending project, something politicians plan projects and earmark funds for only during election season; they _didn't _have to put our schools in the same fucking building.

Every day, for five years, I've roamed the same halls and non-halls. I've watched the same nonexistent basketball games from the corner of my eye and ignored the noise that wasn't there from the pep rallies that weren't happening down the hall that didn't exist. Let me tell you, _everyone_ knows what's going on, and _everyone_ knows who's who to some degree. We follow the same trends, wear the same clothes, watched the same corporate fed commercial shit piped in on TVs during homeroom, and read the same writing on the bathroom wall. We're the same school, only we're not allowed to talk about it. The boundaries are bullshit, just like the force fed notions that we should unsee things on the other side. That's something I realize every time I'm hear the word _nigger_ come out of the mouth of some racist preppy Ul Qoma dickhead. Try explaining to a teacher that you've just been harassed by someone who doesn't exist, and see what happens.

Of course, the authorities don't care. There's not a single position at PS 11 set up to handle those kind of crossover problems, anyway. And, like I've said, there's really no Breach presence in Gloucester, unless things get so bad that people _need_ a good scaring. But, at the end of the day, no one really gives a fuck.

Come to think of it, that's probably why it's so crime infested, with all the contraband from both sides coming in. My home's like a lost cause, and embarrassing novelty where the rules of both sides and the agreed-upon city boundaries go widely ignored. And, hell, even I didn't care about the Breach or even think about it until _she _died. But that's a different story that I'll get into later.

But then again, Gloucesterites don't need to learn how to unsee things like the rest of the people in Beszel or Ul Qoma. You've probably already guessed this: most of them aren't going anywhere.


End file.
